hydraxian-waterlords
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Yes, Molten Core LFR will grant Hydraxian Waterlords reputation
I'm pretty excited about the upcoming 10th Anniversary Molten Core LFR, but I have to admit, of all the reasons I have to be excited about that, the idea that it would be a way to gather Hydraxian Waterlords reputation would have been absolutely on the bottom of the list. However, some of you apparently care about this, and now it's official - Crithto has confirmed that yes, Virginia, there is a Hydraxian Waterlords Reputation Santa Claus. So there you have it. Now, when I ran Molten Core, back in the day, you needed that rep to get the Aqual Quintessence you needed to douse the runes. And you needed one Quintessence per rune, so several people in your raid had to be gathering rep with them in order to get enough to complete the raid! You kids today, you don't even need to march 40 people through Blackrock Depths to get them to the Raid entrance inside the very base of the dungeon! Now (well, soon) you just queue up in LFR and get all the sweet Hydraxian Waterlords reputation you want, and you don't even need it for anything! I'll be over here in my rocking chair.
WoW Archivist: The classic Molten Core experience, part 2
WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? In the last WoW Archivist, we covered the early parts of Molten Core: the "attunement," the grueling trash clear to Lucifron, and the weird hunter-focused mechanics of Magmadar. As we left off, the raid had just reached its first rune. To douse the rune and (eventually) summon Majordomo Executus, you had to make friends with an angry royal guy made of water. The duke of douse Duke Hydraxis, as a water elemental, wasn't very fond of other elemental types, particularly Ragnaros or his fiery kin. His Hydraxian Waterlords were the first raid-based reputation in WoW. You could rep up with them before setting foot in Molten Core by killing certain elementals out in the world, but only up to just shy of honored. After that, you had to run MC to get additional rep. Trash gave rep until revered, but only boss kills got you through the slow grind to exalted. Meanwhile, you could complete a small quest chain for the Duke. He first sent you to kill elementals in Plaguelands and Silithus, and then to obtain an item from Pyroguard Emberseer in Blackrock Spire. Further quests involved killing specific trash mobs and bosses in Molten Core. Hands of the Enemy quite literally asked you to bring him the severed hands of Lucifron, Gehennas, Shazzrah, and Sulfuron. Once completed, you could loot the duke's coffer and choose one of two very valuable fire resistance rings. At this point, the duke also gave you an Aqual Quintessence, one of the most famous items from classic WoW.
Blizzard confirms retroactive achievements, when possible
Ever since achievements were announced, the question I've heard the most from players has been about whether what they've already done will count. I attemped to answer this with a little bit of speculation last week, and today Tigole has basically confirmed what we'd already said: that where possible, Blizzard will award achievements retroactively.As we said last week, things like reputations and quests are easy to track -- other than dailies, you can't do the same quest twice, so it's easy for Blizzard to know, since day one, which quests you've done. And if a quest takes you to kill, say Onyxia, and you've completed it, then obviously you've got the achievement. Where it gets a little fuzzier is if you haven't done that quest, but you have killed Onyxia -- Blizzard probably doesn't even know yet if they'll do things like look for specific loot from certain bosses in a character's history, or if they'll extrapolate things even farther -- if you're Exalted with Hydraxian Waterlords, does that mean you've cleared MC?But Tigole does say that Blizzard is making a conscious decision to be as inclusive as possible on these old achievements -- whenever they can, they'll reward credit rather than making you go back to redo old content. That's a good choice -- it does mean that a few people will get angry for not getting the achievement because they killed the boss but didn't do the quest, but the alternative, awarding no retroactive achievements at all, would be even more frustrating.
Raiders Rejoice!
It may be a small change, but an important one for many guilds raiding Molten Core. For those of you who don't know, to summon Majordomo, which allows you to summon Ragnaros, you must douse several runes throughout Molten Core using a special item - aqual quitessence - that is obtained from Duke Hydraxis far off the coast of Azshara. The item is single use, unique, and it's a long, long run to get to Hydraxis and back. So each raid you must ensure that several players have made the trek to Hydraxis to acquire a fresh batch of aqual quitessence - an organizational headache, I assure you. And let's not even get into the number of raids that have had to stop while several players hearthed and ran to Azshara, because everyone assumed someone else would bring aqual quitessence that run. However, today community manager Eyonix announced that there will be a multi-use version of the aqual quitessence that players will be able to acquire upon reaching revered with the Hydraxian Waterlords. Huzzah!
